TOPIC: Normal harder in "Into the dark" than "Sable"

This year I got two friends to join me and my wife on our quest of true dungeon. I equipped us well enough to survive the adventures. As a majority of both times we had a lot of new players in both groups, we kept it to a normal setting. During "Into the dark" we ended up almost losing half the party and only collecting one treasure. While it seemed on the other hand during Sable, we killed all creatures and gained all treasures with two deaths by players not saying they needed healed. I was informed during our Sable adventure by a DM that it was decided that normal actually had higher ac and hp creatures than last year to compensate for "nightmare players" in normal parties. Only once did I see a player that actually used a level 5 rogue in my party and he wasn't that great at anything during the whole time other than collecting 16 treasure due to his collection of tokens. In my opinion if it is to be called normal then a full party of new players with just their roll of tokens should be able to win all the fights. Not go home and say it was a waste of $60 big ones and two hours of time. Along with if a vote is for nightmare is called and used then all players in party should be given level 5 characters or at least new players given another roll of tokens. As for hardcore this year it really felt like a flip of the coin if it was normal or nightmarish. That is what I had seen this year.

Not certain what you mean by a vote fore nightmare and everyone should given 5th lvl cards. Difficulty is not decided by majority vote. All have to agree to it. If you don't think you can handle nightmare tell the coach. The party cannot make you do nightmare.

That said if you are given 5th level cards without the tokens to get to 5th level it is not fair to those that did acquire the needed tokens to get to 5th lvl.